July 14: Arthur Laurents

Playwright, librettist and film director Arthur Laurents (Levine), who created the storyline for West Side Story out of Romeo and Juliet, was born in Flatbush on this date in 1917 to left-leaning parents. His first commercially produced play, Home of the Brave (1945), was about anti-Semitism in the military. Moving to Hollywood, he wrote the scripts for The Snake Pit (1948), an unusually frank film about mental illness and institutional abuse, and for Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope (also 1948), which starred Laurents’ lover, Farley Granger, as one of three gay characters. After Laurents was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, he and Granger departed for Paris with Harold Clurman and.Stella Adler and remained traveling throughout Europe and northern Africa for about 18 months. As a playwright or librettist he also worked on Time of the Cuckoo, Gypsy, I Can Get It For You Wholesale (which helped turn Barbra Streisand into a star), The Way We Were and The Turning Point; he also directed the film version of La Cage aux Folles in 1983. “. . . Laurents’ female characters are portraits of human resilience,” writes Raymond-Jean Frontain at the online glbtq encyclopedia. “They spoke strongly to the pre-Stonewall generation of gay men, themselves experimenting with constructing an alternative, more satisfying existence.” Laurents was partnered with actor Tom Hatcher for 52 years. He died on May 5, 2011 at age 93. Following a long tradition, Broadway theater lights were dimmed for one minute at 8 PM on May 6, 2011 in his honor.

“His name is synonymous with the great Broadway musicals and plays of our time.” —Charlotte St. Martin

Ninety-one-year-old Arthur Laurents discusses on Theatre Talk the Broadway revivals he directed of Gypsy in 2008 and the bilingual production of West Side Story in 2009: